Monday, April 21, 2014

Easter 2014

For breakfast, I had made hot cross buns and cinnamon rolls the night before. Most of the cinnamon rolls went in the freezer for after the baby comes. The buns were so good fresh out of the oven that I called the kids back out of bed late at night just to share the goodness with them fresh. But yes, they were still really good on Sunday morning, too! :)

In lieu of Easter baskets, I continued our new tradition of Easter dresses for the girls, and new swim clothes for the boys. This year, I sewed the girls' dresses myself. Even though I started months ago, I did not finish the last dress until 11 pm on Saturday night - ha! I was literally falling asleep at the sewing machine.

This year, I also gave each of the kids their own beach blanket. They go swimming every single day in the summer, and often mix up their towels. When that happens, they just toss all of them in the dirty laundry. To prevent that from happening this year, I figured different towels for each of them would help cut down on the unnecessary laundry. Plus, we needed new towels anyway, so this was a good way to combine the necessary with some gift-giving ;)

Of course, the boys wanted to try out their new swim clothes right that morning. Even though daytime temps are getting into the 90s here, the pool is still only in the 70s, so I only let them have a quick dip before getting ready for church.

We got ready early enough to snap about 50 pictures of the kids, of which this is the only one that came out with most of them mostly smiling at the camera and mostly keeping their eyes open. Getting a good picture becomes exponentially harder the more people there are in it.

Stephen was being really sweet, and happily posing for pictures.

At church, we broke our previous Sunday morning attendance record of 111, with 118 in attendance. Which means there was ice cream for all after the service! You can listen to the sermon here or view it on YouTube here.

After church, we enjoyed a wonderful ham dinner at home.

A great day overall. We will be doing more professional pictures of the whole family once the new baby is born.

8 comments:

Looks like you had so much fun! Praise the Lord for the record breaking attendance! Wish we could have added to the attendance but your church is 40 hours away...lol. I love their dresses! Is the pool in your backyard?

The dresses you made for your daughters are very pretty. When I was a little girl, my mother would stay up all hours of the night sewing dresses for my sisters and me. My parents didn't have a lot of money, but we always had beautiful dresses. When your daughters are grown, they will remember that their mother worked long into the night so that they would have pretty dresses to wear to church on Easter.

I too, make my daughters new dresses for Easter, and like you I make an early start, but find time quickly gets away, I was still finishing Alana's dress on the Saturday night as well! We don't do matching dresses though, I let each of them choose a fabric and pattern - although after the pretty smocking Lucy chose, and the subsequent labour to add it in, I'm rethinking that idea! Our boys get new shirts, although I don't sew those, Adam is hero-worshipping his biggest brother Isaiah at the moment, and HAD to have exactly the same shirt, much to I's disgruntlement as he really values being individual. We also celebrate commercially with an egg hunt on the Sunday morning, it's wonderful seeing a brood of excited children racing around the yard in the sunshine looking for treats. Of course the babies only watched, and Ruby and Alana don't really participate for themselves as much as escorting Caitlin and Adam around helping them find eggs.

It looks like a lovely Easter, my sister was kind enough to make us the same treats you had, fresh baked cinnamon scrolls are divine! I must commend your photo as well, it's hard getting 9, (11 if my husband and I are in the photo!) looking at the camera, eyes open and smiling at the same time. Fortunately my husband is a whiz with photo editing and can combine a number of photos to get a good one - his grandmother gets very sniffy if the photos aren't "perfect" - but we love the outtakes for our personal albums. Nothing like having everyone smiling nicely, and the toddler sticking her tongue out for a good laugh!

If I may ask as well, seeing as you have such clear views on gender roles and identity, if you had an opinion on more "gender-neutral" names, that could represent either boy or girl, for example Bobby Jaime, and Ashley - I have known both men and women with these names. Do you feel that gender specification extends to names as well, and should be clearly male or female? My 9 have what I think are clear names, Alana Margaret, Ruby Elizabeth, Lucinda Audrey, Isaiah Daniel, Byron James, Adam Michael, Caitlin Esther, Jackson Robert and Emily Rose :) I know it's a bit off topic, but I must admit I'm curious if you have the time to answer.

I love your girls' dresses -- so pretty and they look thrilled to have them! Do you also make the boys' swim trunks? If so, do you use a pattern? Love the idea of swim towels. It must be so nice to have a private pool in that heat!

I think that your middle little girl looks like mom and so does the third oldest boy. All very cute kids and they have two very good looking parents that's why they are so cute. Can't wait to see new baby.

Glad to see the boys wear shirts in the pool. And I've seen the pics of your daughters swimming in prior years; like their swim outfits too. I'm not too much into modesty concerns at the pool or beach; I'm originally from California, so I've seen it all; but I do agree with my hubby that men and women wearing skimpy suits are just asking to join the "Melanoma club." I'm from Germanic descent myself and have lived in the Tucson area since I was 12, so know how dangerous the Arizona sun can be to us!

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